Deconstructing the Garmin Etrex Vista GPS
El Hombre writes “The Vista is a nice unit and I quite like it (mainly for biking and hiking) but it must be said that Garmin’s service and repair policy stinks. There is a default warranty of one year, and after the warranty has expired, you are charged a flat rate for any repair. The flat rate depends on the model and for the Vista it will set you back about $150. Right, that’s half the price of a new unit.”… Here the how to on a DIY fix for a bad electrical contact on the Garmin Etrex Vista. Thanks Tom! Link.
I was just making one of these when MAKE pal Steve sent this in! – “Well, as you may know I like to shoot a timelapse video now and then… I’ve been using an earlier version of this iSight tripod mount for about a year, so today I thought I’d share the new and improved version: It consists of a couple of pieces of hardwood braced at a 90 degree angle… I have one piece of wood with two holes in it (the mounting plate), and then a piece of wood that is 90 degrees to the mounting plate for the iSight bracket to grab on to, and then two triangles (with the corners cut off)… “ 
MAKE Flickr photo pool member Chris Mckenna writes “I was inspired by Mister Jalopy’s MAKE volume 04 
Trevor writes “When I got my first iTrip, I loved it. Yea, the range and quality could be better, but hey, I’ve got my iPod playing in my car. Then I found a tutorial online which explained how to increase the iTrip’s range simply by taking the antenna out of the case. When I did it, I was amazed at the increase in audio quality. Such a simple hack can easily make your iTrip much better. Then, I got the new iTrip LCD from Griffin, which has an LCD screen to display the station and a knob to change it. Griffin says the LCD version has better audio quality and range than the old iTrip, but it still didn’t match my hacked iTrip. Since I couldn’t find a tutorial online, I decided to just dive in. I used the same basic method as with the old iTrip, with a few small changes. If you decide to do this to your iTrip, know that it does void the warranty, and you need to be very careful.” 
Excellent site documenting a homemade pipe organ – Maker Raphi writes “The following website describes the process of how I designed and am currently building a 5 stop, 5 rank, all wood pipe organ for my house. I’m not an organist and I can barely play piano but I love music, organs and woodworking. Add to that that I’m a mechanical engineer and you have all the ingredients for a project like this.” Thanks 
“The nitrogen laser will give 100kW pulses of light at 337.1nm (UVA light). The pulses are only 6ns long, so the energy per pulse is just 0.6mJ. It is a very simple laser, and it does not require mirrors or glass working at all! But using a mirror at one end of the laser will boost the output to over 250%. And if the nitrogen entering the laser (it is a flowing gas laser, but it can be made sealed) is cooled, it can go up to 120 pps. So if it is running at 120 pps, and has a mirror at one end, the average power output will be 180 mW. Although the beam is invisible it can be used to pump dye lasers to give beams with wavelengths ranging from infrared to ultraviolet.” 
“Two Industrial Design students from the National Univeristy of Singapore (NUS) are the first Asians to win the Design Lab Award at the international Electrolux Design Lab 2005 competition! Their product? A waterfall-inspired washing unit that require neither water nor detergents.” [
